Ever seen game cinematics that didn't suck?

I can't think of any off the top of my head. Even if the game is good, I usually roll my eyes at the cutscenes. I feel as though the devs rarely, if ever, invite folks from the film industry to come in and look at their work. I'm an amateur videographer, so it's not like I'm a certified expert, but I pay a great deal of attention to cinema.

When I look at cutscenes, even from big budget titles like GTA 5, I think to myself, "They don't have a fucking clue about composition or movement." There's this clumsy, naive attempt to look cinematic that fails completely, because they don't have someone to look over their shoulders and say, "Okay, movies don't look like this. They use rules of thirds. Shots are methodically composed. Long and short lenses are used for specific situations. Depth of field doesn't always have to be shallow. Shakiness is not necessary in every shot."

I would have honestly thought that by now, that folks from Hollywood (or even the indie scene) would be an integral part of the dev process. And this is not even getting into the fact that the dialogue is typically beyond stupid, or just stale. What's the deal?

Diablo
Diablo II
Starcraft and Brood War

Uncharted, but they Mocapped people acting it.

I've always loved the Syndicate intro cinematic.

Zelda: Twilight Princess
Resident Evil 4
Silent Hill: Shattered Memories


It's not just bad video games that suffer from what you describe. Bad movies do the same thing.

Why hire film directors when all you need for that true authentic cinematic feel™ is silky smooth 30 FPS?

Watch Dogs' are pretty good.

Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy had some good enough cutscenes, the Knights of the Old Republic games had some alright cutscenes too.

Mirror's Edge had decent ones

I don't think it's possible to cram more awesomeness into two minutes.

Dark Forces II

And while it may not count as there's few "moving cutscenes," Max Payne 1 and 2.

Heh, I thought Jedi Knight had hilariously awkward cutscenes and even Lucas Arts knew, so they went for in-engine plot scenes in Jedi Knight 2 and forth.

i felt that killed a whole lot of charm for the game, though. sure, the cutscenes might not be very well-acted at all, but i'd rather watch some silly actors than those, quite frankly, rather ugly models. not that THAT was Mysteries of the Sith's biggest flaw, though...

Basically most Blizzard Games.

The Last of Us

Back in the day you appreciated cutscenes more because they were rarer. Nowadays cutscenes interrupt playing process more often but I still like them. In classic games like fallout 1-2, resident evil 1-3 it was always exiting to see cinematics and just stare at them in awe

Oddworld had me quite captivated back in '99.

Any Blizzard cinematic.

Also, the intro to Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver was awesome too.

PS1-era Final Fantasy, Asura's Wrath, maybe others.

Still gives me goosebumps.


Oh yeah, this one, too. The whole game is amazing.

Coopersville said:

PS1-era Final Fantasy

they're kind of awkward what with the characters never saying a damn thing, though. then again, i vastly preferred the characters keeping their mouth shut.

What about Wing Commander? I mean it has Luke Skywalker\The Joker himself

Sure, it's cheesy and unrealistic, but it has that certain Indiana Jones style charm that I absolutely love. Possibly the greatest video game cinematic I've ever seen:

i don't care what anyone says, I LOVED the cinematics from the first Resident Evil (Playstation).

So bad, it was good. Sorta of like Troll 2.

Kontra Kommando said:

i don't care what anyone says, I LOVED the cinematics from the first Resident Evil (Playstation).

So bad, it was good. Sorta of like Troll 2.

Lol. I enjoyed the intros from quake2 and quake4. No dialogue, and enough ideas incorporated to set the tone and help you hit the ground running. They were short, sweet, and to the point.

RUSH said:

Sure, it's cheesy and unrealistic, but it has that certain Indiana Jones style charm that I absolutely love. Possibly the greatest video game cinematic I've ever seen[/b].

Totally agree with you. Great Indiana Jones vibe and set me up to enjoy myself. I picked this one up on amazon for $5. I thought it was a nice game, had a lot of fun with it. Don't know why the critics were so down on raven for this one and quake4. I thought they were both pretty great and what they needed to be.

Also, Deus Ex. It has been a long time, but I really enjoyed that story and remember the dialogue as being particularly strong for its time.

I suppose some of them are kinda 'eyeroll worthy', but the litte scenes in Ninja Gaiden were pretty great for NES standards.

It feels pretty damn compelling having a story to follow throughout the game, though I don't think it's crucial by any means.

I thought GTA 4 had pretty good cinematics for the time though. Maybe I was just tricking myself into thinking that when I was playing regularly.

dew said:

Heh, I thought Jedi Knight had hilariously awkward cutscenes and even Lucas Arts knew, so they went for in-engine plot scenes in Jedi Knight 2 and forth.

I thought they were great. Neame's over-the-top villain was perfect, and 8t88 was genuinely sinister and chilling at times with Denny Delk's delivery. I think the Audio Dramas based on the DF books fucked up 8t88's voice big time. And it was charming, really.

MotS cutscenes were really fugly, not to mention at a pitifully low resolution worse than the DFII cutscenes. Obviously, the game had a smaller budget (Although I'm pretty sure DFII sold pretty damn well) so the poor quality cutscenes were a product of the budget, I assume. The cutscenes were passable in JO and JA, if only because they were in real time and the Q3 engine just looked better than the Sith Engine.

RUSH said:

Sure, it's cheesy and unrealistic, but it has that certain Indiana Jones style charm that I absolutely love. Possibly the greatest video game cinematic I've ever seen:

Yeah, way better than the yawn inducing RtCW cutscenes.

"Hey, lets puke out exposition with some talking heads that constantly shift in place with occasional cutscenes focusing on something else."

The Ratchet and Clank series has some entertaining, clever cutscenes. Ratchet is a dick in the first game but I think that got retconned for the HD collection.